


It Never Made Any Sense, Anything

by laulan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-23
Updated: 2010-07-23
Packaged: 2018-09-27 16:31:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10032179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laulan/pseuds/laulan
Summary: Sam keeps one of Dean's shirts after he dies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by [this brilliant poem](http://yupnet.org/siken/2008/03/21/straw-house-straw-dog/) by Richard Siken, particularly this line: "I don't really blame you for being dead but you can't have your sweater back." (It's not absolutely necessary to have read the poem to read this, but I highly recommend it.) Title is also from the poem.

It was a stupid thing to do. He should have left it with Bobby like everything else, folded up on top of a devil's trap and circled by a ring of salt--safe, protected, shut away. (Don't burn any of it yet, okay, please, Bobby. Just give me time, give me some time.) It was a stupid thing to do, but he did it anyway. He snuck it out before Bobby saw. It was old and worn, and easy to hide under his jacket.

Everyone knew he would take the amulet. That was a given. Bobby passed it to him right after, his hand uncurling over Sam's and his voice saying you'd best take this. Sam nodded. He put it on his neck and its cold weight settled right over his heart like it was supposed to. He wore it and it was right that he did; it was what forced him to keep hunting for a way to drag Dean back.

The shirt, though--that didn't make any sense.

It wasn't even Dean's favorite shirt. It was just the grey plaid one, fuzzy from years of use, with that one thread that Dean had always been too lazy to cut off hanging down at the bottom and those stubborn old flecks of blood clinging around one of the pockets. Sam knew he wasn't supposed to have it, wasn't supposed to _want_ it, because there wasn't a single thing left of Dean in it. Not really.

But he took it, he let himself take it. His Psych 120 class buzzed in his head and spat out reasons (obsession trauma avoidance performing ritual displacement psychosis), but he didn't listen to any of them. He couldn't understand his own thoughts anymore anyway--he was too mixed up on the inside.

Dean was dead and Sam was something new, and he didn't know what it was yet, how to think it and breathe it. He didn't know how to be anything else than what he'd always been; there was no way not to be a brother, not that he knew. Even at Stanford he hadn't been able to shake that goddamn word from himself. He had kept his mouth closed about his family and tried to forget the bits of Latin he knew, the leftover nightmares and the feeling of a gun warming in his hand, but none of it had really worked. He had still been John's son; Dean's brother.

Now he wasn't anymore. He was just one person alone with no family and he didn't know how to do it. His thoughts were all wrong for how he had to be, and he didn't know what switch to turn to make them right.

Sometimes he woke up and he could get out of bed and sometimes he woke up and he couldn't. Sometimes he got so angry he couldn't breathe, but it was a clumsy, messed-up anger, more like being crazy than anything else. His thoughts all jumbled, all caught up in his throat where they had to stay. This one at the bottom of everything: Dean had left him here, but Sam couldn't really blame him. He would have made a deal, too. He would have made _any_ deal.

For a while he wore the shirt every day. It still smelled like Dean at first, sweat and laundry detergent and gunpowder. It was a little too tight, pulling over his shoulders. He wore it anyway. It was a reminder: this is your fault. This is your fault, this is your fault. The flannel cuffs cradling his wrists, circling up around his veins and swallowing him down, were the best kind of reminder. You can't forget something that's right up against your skin.

*

Ruby was the only one who knew, and that was only because she wouldn't stay away. He could tell by the way she looked at him that she didn't get it. Or maybe she got it too well. Maybe she had looked inside all the slick dark places in his head and figured something out that he hadn't.

You miss him too much, she said. Wearing his old skin like a demon. Her hand sliding over his shoulder. That's not healthy, kiddo. Aren't you even a little mad at him for leaving?

Her touch on the seam of Dean's shirt made his skin crawl. It was like she was reaching her whole hand inside the bars of Sam's ribs, her whole little hand clawing in the pit of his chest. Her fingers squeezing his heart, her nails scraping it. She stroked the stitching with her thumb and his guts wrenched.

Don't touch it, he whispered, mouth dry. He couldn't say no to other things, maybe, but this--Don't touch it, don't touch it.

Make me, she said. C'mon, Sam. I know you can.

He wanted to tell her that he knew she didn't have any of the answers--not really.

Some nasty whispery part of him said neither do you, Sam Winchester.

Neither do you.

*

He wore Dean's shirt and he did what Ruby said because he didn't have any other options. Maybe it was the wrong thing. Maybe Dean would have said it was the wrong thing. He didn't know.

He wore Dean's shirt till it fell apart and wondered if anything would ever feel like the right thing.


End file.
